Last Born In The Wilderness

Photo Credit: Eli Stonemets

My name is Patrick Farnsworth. I’m a long-form interviewer, occasional writer, and host of Last Born In The Wilderness, a podcast I’ve produced for the better part of a decade. I’m also a co-host of Attack & Dethrone GodCast, and the author of We Live In The Orbit Of Beings Greater Than Us, a compilation of close to thirty interviews originally aired on Last Born and interlaced with commentary, published through Gods & Radicals Press.

My work explores a diverse set of topics through an overarching framework that is undeniably collapse-aware. I grew up in occupied Shoshone-Bannock territory (Southern Idaho) and became politicized in my teenage years, beginning with a personal exploration into the roots of United States imperialism, capitalism, settler-colonialism, and white supremacy. Inevitably, my focus turned toward the intersecting crises of catastrophic climate disruption and global ecological collapse—the “Anthropocene.” In attempting to further understand these subjects, I began to produce Last Born In The Wilderness, a podcast featuring discussions with a wide variety of individuals exploring these difficult subjects in their own respective fields. I share these interviews with anyone curious to listen.

With that said, my political/spiritual philosophy is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, ecologically-centered, and animist. We are facing the potential extinction of our species. Building solidarity and doing the sacred work, in spite of the inevitable, is still worth it. The alternative is too horrifying to consider.

If you are able and willing, consider supporting my work through a one-time donation through PayPal or Venmo. Also, you can sustain my work on a monthly or yearly basis through my Patreon page, which is my main source of income at this time. Patrons of my work gain early access to all my interviews before they’re released publicly, and access to some exclusive content as well.

 

Resources

This video was filmed by Eli Stonemets. Learn more about Eli and his music project Backyard Universe.

Over the course of doing this work, I’ve been interviewed several times for various programs, featured in a few articles, conducted a TEDx talk, and invited to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit. These resources, hopefully, will give you a glimpse into how I approach this work more fully.

AMA:

  • In January 2021 I was invited to do an AMA on the r/collapse subreddit. There were a lot of great questions, take a look!

TEDxTWINFALLS:

  • In April 2018, I conducted a talk, titled Foraging Connections in Perilous Times, at the TEDxTwinFalls event at the Orpheum Theater in Twin Falls, Idaho.

    “In this talk, Patrick Farnsworth goes over some major trends currently manifesting on this planet, in particular the systematic unraveling of the biosphere, the severe decline of global wildlife and insect populations, widespread pollution, and the catastrophic changes currently underway in our global climate system. In these times of accelerating non-linear change, how are we meant to grapple with the very dire and bleak reality we are making for ourselves and all other life on this planet?”

    Magic Valley Times News covered the event in their article TEDxTwinFalls brings conversations worth talking about by Bowen West, published April 10th, 2018.

Interviews:

  • Margaret Killjoy, host of Live Like the World is Dying, invited me on to “talk a lot about covid, public health, the role of anarchism in public health, and the weirdly similar origins of the names of two projects.” Released October 2023.

  • Elle Billing, host of Hoorf! Radical Care in a Late Capitalist Heckscape, invited me on to have “a frank discussion on caring in the age of ecological crisis.” Released January 2023.

  • John Kapeleris, host of The Classical Republican program on YouTube, invited me on to discuss anarcho-communism. It’s broken up into two parts [Part One and Part Two]. Released May 2022.

  • Safara Parrott, host of The Liberation Podcast, had me on last week to discuss a whole host of subjects my work with Last Born In The Wilderness tends to explore, including: the apocalypse and religion; the climate and ecological crises; animism, colonialism, and somatics; grief and how to confront hope. Released November 2021.

  • The Poor Prole's Almanac interviewed me about "climate change, fascism, and grief." Released August 2021.

  • I was interviewed by Piper Furiosa of The Luciferian Dominion about my book, my religious upbringing, white supremacy, and mutual aid. They did an excellent job with the transcript! Released July 2020.

  • Psychologist, creativity researcher and environmental chemist Dr. Victor Shamas interviewed me in May 2020 for his podcast Nature Am I. The episode addresses “the deeper implications of ecological collapse, the significance of the current COVID-19 pandemic, and whether or not there are grounds for hope in the face of a potential apocalypse.”

  • Michael Dowd interviewed me in April 2020 for his YouTube program Post-Doom on YouTube — “regenerative conversations exploring overshoot, grief, grounding and gratitude.”

  • I was invited onto J.G. Michael’s podcast Parallax Views in February 2020 to have a debate/discussion with Alexander Miller to discuss: “Are We Doomed?”

  • I was featured, along with Michael Sliwa and Paul Beckwith, on Mike Ferrigan’s program Extinction Radio in November 2019.

  • I was invited to join J.G. Michael on his program Parallax Views in August 2019 to discuss the United States medical system, GoFundMe campaigns, the environmental and climate crises, and the connections between these subjects.

  • I was invited to join J.G. Michael on his program Parallax Views in October 2018 to have a “nearly two-hour, wide-ranging, sobering conversation on man's future in light of the possibility of catastrophic climate change.”

  • Dean Spillane Walker, host of The Poetry of Predicament, was kind enough to invite me on in September 2018 to discuss our “predicament-laden” times. We delve deeply into the impossible conversation around abrupt climate disruption and the likely near-term extinction of the human species, and peel back the layers of this difficult, multi-layered subject.

  • The very first time I was interviewed was back in May 2018 for The Unists Podcast. We discuss the “Left v. Right on Science and Race.”

Articles:

 

PUBLISHED WORKS

Several of my interviews have transcribed and published at Gods&Radicals Press, Truthout, Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil, and elsewhere.

Articles:

 

EPISODE 300: A SEVEN PART SERIES

Description:

This long, seven part series (something I half-seriously call an episode) is a labor of love. With each part, I was able to pull at the threads of this work over the previous 100 episodes; each major theme I’ve explored through dozens of interviews coalesced into seven hours-long audio compilations. 

Each of these seven parts were released as individual podcast releases. Many of you may have heard these — I thank you and I hope they resonated. Along with this, I’ve uploaded each part as individual “albums” on Bandcamp, which you can download for free, or pay for, if you would be so kind and willing to do so.

 

WE LIVE IN THE ORBIT OF BEINGS GREATER THAN US

Description:

Gods&Radicals Press is deeply excited to offer this collection of interviews of scientists, feminists, theorists, psychologists, journalists, environmentalists, and other important thinkers, all addressing the most overwhelming crisis of our time: Climate Change and the collapse of industrial civilization.

We Live In The Orbit of Beings Greater Than Us collects interviews by audio journalist Patrick Farnsworth which first appeared on his popular podcast, Last Born In The Wilderness.

This collection weaves together the words of these thinkers into a profound narrative that challenges the way we think about the future of the planet, unflinching in its approach while always grounded in love for humanity and nature.

We Live In The Orbit Of Beings Greater Than Us features 30 interviews, along with Patrick Farnsworth commentary on the significance of each interview to our collective work for each other, ourselves, and for the earth.

Read the introduction to the book.

Featured interviewees:

  • Dahr Jamail is an award-winning journalist who regularly reported on climate disruption and environmental issues for the online publication Truthout. Prior to his work reporting on environmental issues, Dahr was one of only a few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the U.S. led invasion in 2003. He is the author of multiple books, including The End Of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, released January of 2019.

  • Nicholas Humphrey is a meteorologist and geoscientist, with a focus on extreme weather events and their connection to our destabilizing climate. Nick’s goal is to communicate in an interdisciplinary fashion the serious risks from climate tipping points, extreme weather events, and ecological collapse. He graduated with a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in societal impacts of extreme weather from South Dakota State University in 2013, and earned an MS in Geoscience—Applied Meteorology from Mississippi State University in 2016. Nicholas is based in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  • Francisco Sanchez-Bayo is an ecotoxicologist and terrestrial ecologist, with a focus on risk assessment of pesticide contaminants on organisms, particularly on birds and aquatic ecosystems, and fate and transport of neonicotinoids and other agricultural chemicals in the environment. He is a former researcher at the University of Sydney, and currently works for the Department of Environment and Energy of Australia.

  • Dr. William Rees is a human ecologist, ecological economist, Professor Emeritus and former Director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning in Vancouver, Canada. Dr. Rees is the originator and co-developer of the Ecological Footprint Analysis, and the co-author (with Mathis Wackernagel) of Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, an exploration of this concept. The Ecological Footprint concept has become the world’s best known metaphor for the human load (the resources required of ecosystems to maintain our current mode of living) on the planet. Dr. Rees has authored (or co-authored) more than 150 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, and numerous popular articles on humanity’s (un)sustainability conundrum.

  • Holly Truhlar is a lawyer, grief therapist, and community builder. She’s integrated her doctorate in law with a Masters in transpersonal counseling psychology to create a model for personal and collective liberation. This model, called Radical Attunement Work (RAW), moves people and groups from dominating and exploitative ways of being into attuned and transformational relationships. Her work lies at the convergence of ancestral grief, collective trauma, conscious collapse, and social justice.

  • Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, lecturer, and author of multiple books, including Against Criticism and The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise, the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains.

  • Rhyd Wildermuth is a co-founder and the publishing manager of Gods & Radicals Press. He’s also a bard, poet, and theorist. He has written numerous essays on paganism, anti-capitalist political theory and analysis, and is the author of Witches In A Crumbling Empire, and most recently All That Is Sacred Is Profaned: A Pagan Guide To Marxism. He is the co-host of Empires Crumble, a podcast on politics, culture, history, and magic with Alley Valkyrie. After spending much of his life within the borders of the United States, he now resides in Luxembourg.

  • Silvia Federici is an Italian-American scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist tradition. She is the author of numerous books, including Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation and Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. She was co-founder of the International Feminist Collective, an organizer with the Wages for Housework Campaign, and was involved with the Midnight Notes Collective.

  • Dr. Gerald Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston and is the author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews, including The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

  • Tad Hargrave is a man with an eclectic background. He is a founding member of several comedy troupes, dedicated almost two years of his life learning his ancestral language (Scottish Gaelic) in Nova Scotia and Scotland, runs a marketing website Marketing For Hippies, worked as the Executive Director of the Canadian branch of Youth for Environmental Sanity, and writes for the blog Healing From Whiteness: Remembering the Larger Story of History. Tad lives in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada.

  • Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker who regularly reports on far-right movements in the US, as well as anti-fascist resistance, workers rights, and class struggle. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It from AK Press, and his work has appeared in numerous publications, such as Jacobin, Truthout, and Commune Magazine.

  • Sinisa Malesevic is a Full Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University College, Dublin, Ireland. He is an elected member of Royal Irish Academy and Academia Europaea (the European Academy) and an elected Associated Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is the author of numerous books, including Grounded Nationalisms, The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence, Nation-States and Nationalisms: Organisation, Ideology and Solidarity, The Sociology of War and Violence, Identity as Ideology, and The Sociology of Ethnicity.

  • Liyah Babayan is an entrepreneur, activist, Armenian refugee, and the owner of Ooh La La! consignment boutique in Twin

    Falls, Idaho. She is the author of Liminal: A Refugee Memoir, which recounts the profound, disturbing, and moving experiences of her childhood fleeing the pogroms enacted against the Armenian minority population in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the midst the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990.

  • Dezeray Lyn is an activist, street medic, and co-organizer of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief (MADR), a “national network made up of many eco-activists, social justice activists, global justice activists, permaculturalists, community organizers, and others who are actively organizing around supporting disaster survivors in a spirit of mutual aid and solidarity.” MADR is a decentralized network, defined by the character and creativity of a multitude of communities and drawn together by the collective commitment to stand in solidarity with those impacted by disasters and turn the tide in favor of climate justice.

  • Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist, activist, and the author of numerous books and essays relating to the subjects of anarchism and resistance movements, as well as historical analysis of early state formation in human societies. Some of his works include What is Democracy?, How Nonviolence Protects the State, Anarchy Works, The Failure of Nonviolence: From the Arab Spring to Occupy, and Worshipping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation. Peter currently resides in Spain.

  • Gord Hill, who also goes under the pen name Zig Zag, is a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation along the Northwest Coast of Canada. He is an anarchist activist, author and illustrator of numerous books/graphic novels, including 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book, and The Antifa Comic Book.

  • Xabat is a representative of the Internationalist Commune of Rojava and the Make Rojava Green Again campaign in cooperation with the Ecology Committee of the Cizire Canton in Northeastern Syria.

  • Ramon Elani is an acausal, anti-modern, heathen poet and author. He holds a Ph.D in literature and philosophy. He lives with his family among mountains and rivers in Western New England. He follows the way of wyrd.

  • Michael J. Sliwa is the author of Chasing A Different Carrot: A Manifesto For The Predicament Of Privilege and is one of the foremost speakers on simple living. He and his wife Karen are former educators who left behind their careers and most of their worldly possessions in order to pursue a life of genuine connectivity. He is the Co-Founder and Development Specialist for TRUality, and is the former co-host of Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network.

  • Rob Seimetz is a writer and former host of Moving Forward on the Progressive Radio Network. He currently lives Portland, Oregon in the United States.

  • John H. Richardson is a journalist and former Writer at Large for Esquire Magazine. He is the author of three books, including My Father The Spy, An Investigative Memoir. He was born in Washington D.C. in 1954, and grew up in Athens, Manila, Saigon, Washington, Seoul, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. John has worked at the Albuquerque Tribune, The Los Angeles Daily News, Premiere Magazine, New York Magazine, and Esquire Magazine and taught at Columbia University, the University of New Mexico, and Purchase College.

  • Jasper Bernes is formerly the Managing Editor of Commune Magazine and Founding Editor of Commune Editions. He is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization and two books of poetry: We Are Nothing and So Can You, and Starsdown. He lives in Berkeley, California with his family.

  • Paul Beckwith is a physicist, engineer, and part-time professor at the University of Ottawa. He earned a Masters in Science in Laser Optics/Physics, and a Bachelors of Engineering in Engineering Physics. He is a known and respected creator of entertaining and comprehensible videos of sometimes daunting subjects, especially in climate system science, meteorology, oceanography and earth sciences on YouTube.

  • Stephen Jenkinson is a culture activist, teacher, author and ceremonialist. He is the author of numerous books, including Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble and Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul. Stephen teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. With Masters degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work), he is revolutionizing grief and dying in North America.

  • Dr. Karla Tait is a clinical psychologist, and is presently employed as the Mental Wellness Advisor for the Northern Region with the First Nations Health Authority, serving the 54 First Nations in Northern BC. Dr. Tait is the Director of Programming for the Unist’ot’en Healing Centre, a collective effort by her Hereditary House Group to revitalize culturally based, wellness and holistic healing practices that are centered on connection to the land. Dr. Tait belongs to the Gilseyhu clan (Big Frog) clan of Yahstowilcus (the Dark House). Her Dini Zi’ (House Chief) is Unist’ot’en, Knedebeas, Warner William, maternal grandmother is Weli’, Catherine Michell, maternal grandfather was Tsayu, Wigitemstochol (Dan Michell), mother is Brenda Michell-Joseph, father is Rene Tait and stepfather is Melvin Joseph. Her father clan is Laksilhyu (small frog/cariboo).

  • Joe Brewer is a change strategist, complexity researcher, cognitive scientist, and evangelist for the field of culture design. He has a background in physics, math, philosophy, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. Awakened to the threat of human-induced climate disruption while pursuing a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, he switched fields and began to work with scholars in the behavioral and cognitive sciences with the hope of creating large-scale behavior change at the level of global civilization.

  • John Halstead is a pagan writer, (former) activist, and author of Another End of the World is Possible, in which he explores what it would really mean for our relationship with the natural world if we were to admit that we are doomed. John is a native of the southern Laurentian bioregion and lives in Northwest Indiana, near Chicago. He is a co-founder of 350 Indiana-Calumet, which (until recently) worked to organize resistance to the fossil fuel industry in the region.

  • Bayo Akomolafe is an international speaker, poet and activist for a radical paradigm shift in consciousness and current ways of living. Bayo is globally recognized for his unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to my Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home and is the Executive Director and Coordinating Curator for The Emergence Network.

 

MATA DAS BRUXAS (Witches’ Forest)

Description:

MATA DAS BRUXAS, published by Plataforma9, features two Br. Portuguese translations of interviews I conducted with Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch and Beyond the Periphery of the Skin.

Website